This is NOT a propaganda piece – Jaker shows just how difficult the job of counterinsurgency is, and how successful and rewarding it can be. The 1st Battalion 5th Marine Regiment’s Regimental Combat Team 3, the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, Combat Logistics Battalion 8 and the unit’s highly motivated civil affairs teams took over Patrol Base Jaker in the almost deserted Taliban controlled town of Nawa-l-Brakzayi in Helmand Province. The British unit that was relieved had been so under manned that they had to over depend on air support that sometimes killed and wounded local civilians.

Enter Jaker’s commanding officer Colonel William McCollough, a scholar-warrior of the best type who commands through example, intelligence and understanding. McCollough’s officers, NCO’s and enlisted personnel not only push back the Taliban from Nawa but implement a large number of successful civil affairs missions, ranging from rebuilding and resupplying local schools, clearing irrigation ditches and providing wheat seed to replace the poppies that help fund the Taliban. They also reinvigorate the abandoned market place, gradually getting the locals to bringing back almost 80 merchants and do their best to help reform the corrupt local governmental hierarchy and police. This is a film about gaining trust, one uneasy step at a time.

It’s a huge job, but the Marines of Patrol Base Jaker are more than up to it thanks to civil affairs professionals like Gus Biggio, who gave up a successful career on Wall Street to serve his country. The success in Nawa is in a big part due to getting to know and understand the local Afghani people, who grow poppies and let their son’s fight for the Taliban, because they’ll wind up dead if they don’t. Afghani governmental and police corruption is not shied away from. McCollough and his officers listen to the complaints and observe the locals confront Afghani officials right on camera.

One of the film’s biggest strengths is that the viewer gets to know average Afghanis, young and old as real people, in many ways vastly different from us, but still wanting peace, education and self determination. School kids and parents yearn for the reopening of the first school and merchants and farmers are anxious to get back to their trades. Even local tribal leaders are shown now not afraid to stand up and speak their minds in public, gradually coming to trust the Americans, not as conquerors but as allies. The Marines in Nawa are not trying to turn these Afghanis into Americans they’re just trying to give them a chance to live their normal lives.

The successes in Nawa didn’t come without a bloody price tag, during filming four Marines, including a highly regarded 34-year-old NCO and recent first time father lost their lives trying to bring peace to the region. One of the most affecting scenes is the ceremony honoring that sergeant with members of the battalion in formation as his helmet is place a top his M-4 carbine commemorating his sacrifice. David Scantling’s Patrol Base Jaker captures the spirit, intelligence and compassion of the modern American fighting man, whose contributions are not always won at the end of the muzzle of a weapon, but often with a bulldozer and a school book.

Mitty Griffis Mirrer’s Gold Star Children is an inspiring look at how the children of service men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are coping with their losses. And it is told through the eyes and words of many of those children and surviving parents including Ms. Mirrer, who lost her own father in Vietnam when she was only 16 hours old. Mirrer doesn’t appear to have any previous film credits, but this film is not only as professional as any top PBS documentary, but also so emotional that hardly anyone in the audience could back a tear or two, myself included.

The spouses and kids of Gold Star children aren’t blaming the U.S. Government for their losses. They are all incredibly proud of their parents or spouses service and are learning to cope through a wonderful mentoring program called TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. At TAPS older children and adults who have lost loved ones go through extensive training to help the younger kids deal with the loss in a positive fashion. In the process the adults learn as much from the kids as the kids do from the adults. The maturity and decency of the youngest surviving family members is incredible to see. Nine-year-olds talk openly about how they are dealing with dad or mom’s death while mothers strive to regain a positive sense of normalcy for their children. Mirrer has captured the children and adults of TAPS on camera in a poignant and compassionate style that was not easy to accomplish.

One dignified Hispanic-American mother tells how as a child she lost her father in Vietnam and now has to deal with the death of her officer husband in Afghanistan. She has two bright and decent teenaged boys who are a true tribute to their dad’s memory and the family works with each other one day at a time in a fitting memory to a loving husband and father.

Gold Star kids are brought to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington to help clean it and are then told the stories behind some of the 50,000 names chiseled there. During the annual Rolling Thunder biker rally of Vietnam Vets these tough looking former soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen are shown giving kids rides on their bikes and talking with them quietly about their own war time friends and experiences. One nine-year-old girl from Texas trains and then runs a children’s TAPS marathon as a tribute to her late father, learning about, while also teaching others, how to deal with the loss while on her own emotional journey.

The quietly gripping content of this film that director Mirrer so deftly gives to her audience makes any one viewing it feel sadness, pride and wonder, all at the same time, at how everyone from grownups to three-year-olds are dealing with their grief. This is not a film that is easy to explain, it is far more a film that has to be felt. Gold Star Children should be mandatory viewing for all high school students so they can see just how real the phrase “Freedom isn’t free,” truly is.

Trailer is NSFW

Its cinema verité style, interspersed with commentary from soldiers interviewed after the deployment, puts you in the center of the action – and inaction – alongside a half dozen or so principal characters. It captures the chaos and the boredom, the courage and the fear, the tension and the playful abandon of their stretch in Outpost Restrepo, named after their young medic, a Korengal casualty.

In between IED attacks, firefights, digging in on a cliff-side, negotiating compensation with the villagers for a dead cow, mourning dead comrades, rooting out arms caches in the village, and general horsing around, these soldiers, painfully young but becoming men before our eyes, offer honest and revealing emotions about these experiences. One soldier says he can barely get his head around it all; he just hopes that “one day I’ll be able to process it differently.”

There is no commentary, however, from politicians, military brass, family, or the filmmakers themselves, who have studiously stripped away any political context for their subject. “The only goal,” they say in their press kit, “is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 94-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you.”

Co-directors Junger and Hetherington explain that “the war in Afghanistan has become highly politicized, but soldiers rarely take part in that discussion… Their experiences are important to understand, regardless of one’s political beliefs.” Absolutely true. But they go on to say that “Beliefs can be a way of avoiding looking at reality. This is reality.”

Maybe so, but avoiding beliefs can be a way of avoiding looking at reality, too. Beliefs can give clarity, meaning, and purpose to reality, as well as shape reality itself; a clash of belief systems is the reason those soldiers were in the Korengal in the first place. To strip away the proper context deprives the audience of a perspective that might have infused the film with greater depth and power. In all fairness, that would be a different movie – a complex, fascinating one perhaps, but one the filmmakers were anxious to avoid.

“Most of documentaries about Iraq and Afghanistan so far have been political polemics, and I think the public is exhausted by them,” says Junger, best-known as the author of The Perfect Storm. The Los Angeles Times echoes this approvingly, noting that the filmmakers of current war documentaries “say that audiences at this historical moment are best served by films that center on specific players instead of the larger conflict.”

Actually, what the public is exhausted by, and never responded to favorably in the first place, is the relentless cinematic depiction of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as unwinnable quagmires, and our prosecution of them as illegal and immoral, in such documentaries as Taxi to the Dark Side, No End in Sight, and The Road to Guantanamo – not to mention Hollywood dramas like Redacted, Lions for Lambs and The Green Zone.

The inconvenient truth that the Times is eager to sweep under the carpet is that such left-leaning films about the current conflicts do not fill theaters, even if they win Oscars, like Taxi to the Dark Side (and even The Hurt Locker, which is a more ambiguous case). Their message: America is bad, our cause is unjust, and war is bad anyway, so we should bring our troops home. Thus Junger is correct that the public does respond more favorably to the rare, politically neutral films that at least honor the troops, such as Taking Chance, Brothers at War, and now, Restrepo.

So he and Hetherington strove for an almost claustrophobically tight focus on the soldiers themselves, and in that respect, their documentary is a compelling slice of military life under circumstances extraordinary even for wartime. “Soldiers are living, fighting and dying at remote outposts in Afghanistan in conditions that few Americans back home can imagine,” Junger rightfully notes. These warriors are too busy doing their job and dodging bullets to debate foreign policy.

But there remains a nagging blind spot to this narrow focus of these politically neutral films: the context of who our enemy is and why we’re fighting them. The Taliban don’t even get a cameo in Restrepo. The reality, as Junger puts it, is not just the soldiers’ day-to-day experience; the larger reality is that our troops are pitted against an implacable religious fanaticism that is a towering threat to democracy, freedom, and modernity itself; a fanaticism about which our leaders are too often in denial even if theirs aren’t. The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe reports that when an Army officer in the valley attempted to reach out to the leader of the Korengali, the response was “If you surrender to the law of Allah then our war against you will end. If you keep fighting for man’s law then we will fight you until Doomsday.”

And therein lies the essence of our Forever War with radical Islam: sharia law versus democracy, in an apocalyptic death match for the future of humanity. Contrary to the Left’s portrayal of this clash, it is a just cause, we are the good guys, and war may be hell but it is sometimes necessary to do battle with evil. This is the true context and the cinematic message that will resonate with audiences.

That’s not to say that we’re handling the conflict well. The reality is also that our troops in Afghanistan are hamstrung by the most restrictive Rules of Engagement in the history of warfare. Our enemy’s clear mission is to drive the infidel from Muslim lands and ultimately from the face of the earth, hacking off civilian and military heads indiscriminately along the way. Our military mission is a nation-building, hearts-and-minds-winning counterinsurgency strategy whose success is measured by “how people feel.”  Ludicrously, we now hand out medals for “courageous restraint” (what I wouldn’t give to hear General Patton’s take on that oxymoron). This context adds a disturbing new dimension to the daily reality of the Restrepo characters and soldiers just like them stationed in Afghanistan.

See Restrepo for its visceral impact and its sympathetic, charismatic cast of real-life heroes (including one quiet young man whose mother he calls “a f***ing hippie” who wouldn’t even allow him a squirt gun as a child). Then remember the context in which those soldiers and many more like them struggle, a larger reality that the film doesn’t address. I can’t sum up that context better than the brilliant British journalist and cultural critic Melanie Phillips:

[T]he Afghanistan war… will hit the buffers unless someone gets a grip. And that means fighting this war as if it really is a war and not a “nation-building” exercise; and saying unequivocally that America is there for as long as it takes because, however awful and bloody this conflict is, the alternative – a jihadi-boosting defeat for the west and the Talebanisation of Pakistan – is infinitely worse.

“I asked my mother if she would come see ["Brothers"] with me, but she said she didn’t want to give any money to a movie in which the preview showed the soldier coming back home and waving a gun at his family in their driveway. I have to admit, the preview disturbed me as well, but decided to see the film anyway because I’m always curious about Hollywood’s take on our soldiers and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, many of these films typically portray our soldiers as deserters—Stop Loss is another classic example of this stereotyping—or complete whackjobs.

“In Brothers, not only does one of the Marines captured by the Taliban actually say that he “realized we shouldn’t be there,” but Maguire’s character beats a fellow soldier to death with a lead pipe. Sam then returns home to his family and goes AWOL trying to kill both his wife and his brother. I don’t care if every producer, director, and screenwriter in Hollywood is against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and presumably most are), what offends me is the portrayal of soldiers as cowards and lunatics—driven to such lengths that they come home and try to kill their families. Obviously, post-traumatic stress disorder has become more prevalent in the military and clearly this is a problem that needs to be seriously addressed. But I believe these films add to the damage when they portray soldiers as disloyal, unwilling to serve, and against the missions themselves. In my experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“How many deserters do you actually hear about on the news? Not very many. Unfortunately, the thousands of stories about heroism and courage that could be told about our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are not in the interest of many Hollywood filmmakers, and so a real disservice is being done to these troops. These films only perpetuate negative stereotypes about soldiers and the military. At a time when support for the war in Afghanistan is dividing this country, I simply don’t understand why Hollywood insists on portraying our soldiers in such a negative light. If Vietnam taught us anything, it was hate the war, love the warrior. …

“I urge everyone to see the documentary Brothers at War to understand what it’s truly like to serve (and be the loved one of someone serving) in a war.”

Read the full article here.

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In 2008, John composed and recorded the song “Brothers in Arms” for Jake Rademacher’s award winning documentary, Brothers at War.  He is also the one responsible for putting together CD for the Troops which is currently in its third incarnation.

This last weekend, I went to see the The Blind Side and, as the credits rolled on this wonderfully uplifting film, I heard a very familiar voice and smiled.  It’s Five for Fighting’s single, “Chances”, that plays at the end of the film.  I decided to reconnect with John, ask him about his new album, Slice, about the tour and find out a little bit about what makes this guy tick.  He was kind enough to play along.

J.R. Head:  John, it’s great to talk to you again. Thanks for taking some time to chat with me.

John Ondrasik:  My pleasure.

JRH:  You’ve been a supporter of first responders and our military as long as I’ve known you.  Did that start with The Concert for New York City or does it go back further?

JO:  I’ve always had great respect for our emergency workers but since the concert for N.Y., I’ve had the opportunity to get up close and spend time with firefighters, police officers, and first responders across the country.  These are great folks who do more than just protect us every day.  The firefighters do amazing work for the MDA and we’re just getting ready to launch Crime Stoppers with the L.A.P.D.

The same goes for the military.  Though I have no military in my family I’ve always appreciated the American soldier.  When the war started in Afghanistan I started receiving e-mails from troops on the ground that were listening to my music.  That began various correspondences that continue to this day.  I started working with the USO, which guaranteed many post gig, over a beer, conversations.  This time with our soldiers has only validated my initial sentiments.  From the 18-year old National Guardsman down in GTMO to the Medal of Honor Recipient, these people continue to astound me daily with their courage and humility.  The only people I hold in higher esteem are their families, who are the backbone of our freedom.

JRH:  Many of your songs deal with those themes.  I know that the song “Two Lights”, off the album of the same name, has a very interesting story.  Would you share it with my readers?

JO:  Believe it or not, I was with a buddy up in No Cal who asked me if I’d like to go hang with Victor Davis Hanson.  We met in a coffee shop, (I had a smoothie) and after a chat VDH invited us to have lunch with a former student who was shipping out to Iraq that week and the student’s Vietnam vet father.  Spending time with the Dad gave me an insight into both the pride and fear parents have for their kids going to war.  I tried to reflect that reality in “Two Lights”.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

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JRH:  Also on that album was “Freedom Never Cries”.  You made a video for the song to benefit Operation Home Front.  It’s got close to a million hits at your charity site.  How did that come about?

JO:  Triwest Health Care was doing a Gala honoring Medal of Honor recipients and their CEO Dave McIntyre had seen the reaction to “Freedom Never Cries” at a few USO gigs.  They asked if they could make a video for the Gala and I jumped at the chance.  They did a fantastic job and allowed me to post the video on whatkindofworlddoyouwant.com for Operation Home Front and Fisher House.  I get a kick that that video has more views than all the Five For Fighting videos put together.  Don’t tell the record company.

JRH:  CD for the Troops has been a huge success.  It’s amazing that you were able to get so many great artists from across the musical and political spectrum to contribute their music for our men and women in uniform.  Who is on the latest one?  What’s next for this venture?

JO:  I’m thrilled with the line up for the CD for the Troops III (Stand up for Troops).  This year I decided to mix it up and reach out to comedians.  Check out this line up…

Chris Rock, Dennis Miller, Adam Sandler, Jeff Foxworthy, Ray Romano, Dana Carvey, Matt Iseman, Kevin Nealon, Kevin James, and more…

The bits are hilarious!  It took a bit of creative editing to get it through the military firewall, though. (laughs)

It’s been rewarding to see all the artists over the years contribute their work for free to a project that is apolitical and a simple thank you to our troops and their families.

JRH:  Military personnel can download the album, right?

JO:  As always the CD for the Troops is free for all military members at AAFES.COM and 200,000 hard CD’s will go overseas to theatre and military hospitals.

JRH:  That’s awesome.  Now, “Brothers in Arms” was written specifically for Jake Rademacher’s film, Brothers at War.  I think I heard you wrote that in, like, five minutes or something?

JO:  I wish all songs came that fast.  I saw Brothers at War in an early incarnation.  I was inspired, went home and wrote and recorded a demo that night.  A few months went by and I happened to play it for Gary Sinise as he’d invited me to the screening.  Fast-forward and that demo (with a few strings added) became the end title for Jake’s film; an honest look at the military family.

JRH:  I think Hollywood missed a great opportunity this Oscar season.  I haven’t seen all the films or heard all the songs that are presently in the running but, if they wanted to win back a portion of the conservative audience, a nomination for either Jake’s film or your song would certainly have gotten some folks on the right to watch.

JO:  Ha.  Don’t get your hopes up.

JRH:  I just saw The Blind Side and really enjoyed it.  It was great to hear “Chances” come rolling out of those speakers as the movie ended.  Did you write that song specifically for the film or was that deal done later?

JO:  Nope, “Chances” is the first single off the new Slice record.  It was actually bouncing around a few films and I’m pleased, as a sports nut, that it landed in The Blind Side.

JRH:  There’s a song on Slice called “Note to the Unknown Soldier”.  Tell me a bit about that.

JO:  That song on it’s surface is a letter of appreciation to all American soldiers, past, present, and future.  Subtler, is the arc of awakening to that realization, as the tone gets more serious as the lyric moves forward.  I’m hoping that reflects itself in the culture.

JRH:  And what about “Tuesday”; a song about 9/11, right?

JO:  As you know 9/11 occurred on a Tuesday and the song is a plea to not forget the lessons learned in the 9/11 attack.  I wrote the song over 2 years ago and unfortunately I think some of my concerns have been realized.  With the upcoming trial of KSM and the country wavering on finishing the job in Afghanistan, I fear Monday is upon us.

JRH:  I’m sorry to say, I agree.  So, what’s next?  Any plans to head out to visit our troops?

JO:  This year’s been crazy with the new record and touring so I’m going to take a little Daddy time early 2010, do a spring Five For Fighting tour, and then I’m sure we’ll do some USO shows around the globe.

JRH:  John, thanks for spending some time with me.  I truly appreciate all you do for my brothers and sisters that are out there, fighting the good fight.

JO:  Team effort.

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Semper fidelis,

J.R. Head

Produced and scripted by Mark Boal (who embedded with a U.S. Army bomb squad operating in Baghdad), the year is 2004 and Iraq is a country under siege, thanks mainly to determined insurgents and roadside IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that seem to be everywhere and frequently come with nearby triggermen lying in wait for the opportunity to do the most amount of damage, preferably to American servicemen and women.  Charged with the dangerous and technically complicated job of defusing these bombs is a three-man EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team led by Staff Sergeant James (an excellent Jeremy Renner) and his squad mates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty).

The opening scene’s a wowser, and the 40 minutes that follow do their job in setting up characters, their relationships and at least giving off the appearance that we’re headed towards something bigger involving Beckham, a young Iraqi boy who sells DVDs on the base. When this storyline strangely pans out to be much ado about nothing, the plot slowly deflates into a series well-staged but interchangeable episodes with no over-arching story. You’re about an hour in when you start to feel the 130 minute runtime.

Every time “Locker” starts to weave any kind of spell something unnecessarily political comes along to break it. Mostly the sucker punches come at the end of a scene as if to say, “That will teach you for buying into it.”  A tense sequence involving an Iraqi cabdriver who runs a roadblock ends with our troopers roughly handcuffing him. This superfluous drama appears to have been filmed only to allow James to give this Leftist belief an airing, “If he wasn’t an insurgent, he sure the hell is now.”

And that’s just the beginning.

Most troubling is a frighteningly unstable, near-psychotic field commander, Colonel Reed (David Morse), who orders his men to let a wounded Iraqi civilian/suspect bleed out to death even after he’s informed the man could easily be saved with a simple radio call. After watching James work, Reed approaches him with crazy eyes gushing over what a “wild man” he is. Not only is this a monstrous depiction of an American Colonel, it’s faulty storytelling. Morse is a recognizable actor and the disturbing impression his character makes is so strong you keep expecting him to return – maybe even as the film’s antagonist.

Reed isn’t the only officer to take a hit. Christian Camargo plays the utterly clueless Colonel Cambridge, a therapist assigned to help Eldridge deal with battlefield trauma. He chirps cheerily, “Going to war is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It could be fun.”

The worst, however, comes near the end. In a moment of tender humanity James risks his life to treat the body of a dead Iraqi — who may or may not be someone he knows — with respect and care. But again, we’re not allowed a pure moment presenting our troops as they are. Instead we cut to Sanford and Eldridge – two characters we’ve come to admire – only to hear this coldly matter-of-fact exchange regarding the dead Iraqi: You think that’s the “little base rat?” “I don’t know man, they all look the same.”

Not one of these moments, and there are a handful of others, is in anyway necessary to the plot or the understanding of these characters. In a movie that’s already twenty-minutes too long, what motivated Bigelow to hang on to them in a film eager to be touted as being “above politics” is beyond me.

In a throwback to Hollywood’s stereotyped depiction of unstable Vietnam vets, the Iraq War has turned our protagonist, James, into an increasingly reckless adrenaline junkie whose disregard for safety and communication protocol puts everyone around him in danger. After defusing  873 of these things, James is certainly comfortable getting off cowboying around any kind of explosives he might come across (and enjoying a cigarette afterwards),  but he’s also a victim of this war, for he’s no longer in control of his own destiny. The film opens on the words “War is a drug,” and that drug is all James desires. So warped by war, even when looking into his infant son’s eyes, James can say out loud that there’s only one thing he loves … and it’s not the boy.

As the plot plods on James becomes increasingly reckless, eventually leading Eldridge and Sanborn on a night-time hunt for a single suspect through a dangerous urban neighborhood with about a million hiding places. James is beyond audacious now, he’s foolhardy and dangerous and this thoughtless venture results in the near-kidnapping of one of his own men who ends up severely wounded – and this wounded man speaks for all of us when he says, “We didn’t have to go out looking for trouble to get you your adrenaline fix, YOU FUCK!”

But because James has no character arc, he learns nothing from this tragic outing. He’s a slave to this drug … to war, an unprofessional loose cannon who can’t love his son, can’t function in the real world and is on a trajectory to either kill himself, or worse, someone else.  Like any junkie, he’s capable of humanity and leadership, he’s no coward and he knows his job, but he’s a victim to this thing and when we leave him we know it can’t end pretty.

It’s too bad the Iraqi people aren’t a protected class among Leftists. Of course, Leftists spent years lobbying in every imaginable way to abandon 25 million of them to death squads and terrorists, so why should it come as a surprise that Michael Bay’s satire of rap culture earns some outrage but “Hurt Locker” gets a pass.

The women are portrayed as either cannon fodder or screaming like savages, and other than a short, strange encounter with a man who wonders if James is CIA, the men are alternately terrorists, a menacing presence, victims, the butt of jokes or utterly clueless. The only Iraqi with a hint of personality is Beckam, but he’s never given a dimension beyond that of a hustler poisoned by our crass American consumer culture, “Wassup, my nigga…?  Want the cool shit?  I hook you up. Donkeykong? Gay sex…? Gangsta. Hey, man, fuck you!”

No, I’ve never been in the military, but when a film’s over I surely know what my opinion of the characters just portrayed up on that screen is, and I’ve seen this movie twice now trying to reconcile how everything listed above can add up to most every review labeling “The Hurt Locker” as “apolitical.”

Has Hollywood so worn us out that we’ve dumbed “apolitical” down to the point where this portrayal of our Iraqi allies, our troops and the officers who lead them qualifies? I’m not looking for John Wayne and I get battlefield cynicism. “Blackhawk Down” and “Brothers at War” do just fine by me. But when the men in the ranks display cold, casual racism, an American Colonel savagely orders that an Iraqi be left to bleed to death and a profoundly unprofessional protagonist, so demented by war he can no longer love his own son, repeatedly endangers himself and the men in his charge, I don’t see “nuance” or “depth” or “complicated” characters. What I see is politics of the worst kind.

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine talks to the media after speaking to the Wounded Warriors

The route to Williamsburg again took the riders through some of the greatest roads in Virginia. The 72-mile route had a couple of long climbs, something that the riders have not seen many of.

Williamsburg is part of the Historic Triangle of Virginia, which also includes Jamestown and Yorktown, is among the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Williamsburg is the original Capitol of Virginia dating back to 1698. Williamsburg was established in 1632. Prior to the arrival of the English colonists at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia in 1607, the area, which became Williamsburg, was largely wooded.

New Kent turns out to welcome the riders

As the ride went through new Kent Township, hundreds of students came out to greet the riders and hear stories from them. The daily USO rest stop was next door and each of the schools teachers brought their students by to talk with the wounded warriors. They were especially fascinated with Jim Penseyres prosthetic leg. When we were in Texas, the kids came out every day, thanks in no large part to all of the efforts by the American Legion Auxiliary.

Jim and the kids

The main development was that Scot Moro, the ex-Mercury Cycling Team mechanic rigged up a push bar for Nate Hunt to enable him to get help on the days big climbs. The unintended consequences were that now Nate was like a rocket and instead of coming in behind most of the regular bikes, he was at the front and actually led the group to the finish in Williamsburg.

Rolling along the roads of Virginia

Tomorrow, we head down the Colonial Parkway on our way to Hampton and Ft. Eustice, home to one of the largest WTU’s will host dinner. In addition, the movie “Brother’s at War” will be shown to a standing room only crowd that will include all of the R2R participants. Thanks to the movie’s creator, Jake Rademacher, for making this possible.

We are only 2 days away from the big concert finish with “American Idol” winner David Cook.

Nate cooling off after a long day in the saddle

Note:  Part 1 of this 4 part interview can be found here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

J.R. Head:  I felt that one of the most important things about the film was that it allows the folks that are left behind, the friends and loved ones, to get a glimpse of a soldier’s everyday life.  I served during relative peacetime but, even for me, it was difficult to explain what my day was like to my girlfriend, to my family… They were always imagining something bad happening.  And, let’s face it, peacetime or wartime, sometimes bad stuff happens.  We train hard, there are accidents and sometimes people die but for the most part you’re just doing your job.  I felt like “Brothers at War” gives folks a good look at what really goes on and allows them to relax a little bit.  Y’know, there’s not, say, a mortar attack every five minutes. 

“Brothers at War” Director, Jake Rademacher:  It’s a great tool for a soldier to allow loved ones a window, a good look at what life is like for them during a deployment.

JRH:  Exactly. That being said, why should someone who doesn’t have a family member serving see this film?

JR: Because they are going to gain insight that you can only gain from being on the frontlines or in the middle of a family living this war on a daily basis.  I had an advertising executive in New York say, “What I loved about “Brothers at War” was that you allowed me to ride shotgun on your journey and you never told me how to think or feel about anything.  I just got to take it all in and make up my own mind.”  I’ve had so many people thank me for not making it political.

When coming to see “Brothers at War” someone from outside the military family is coming in with a number of assumptions whether they know it or not.  As an audience it is always delightful to be surprised, to make discoveries, to be able to have your perspective challenged and informed.

In “Brothers at War” they get to dive right in and meet these guys, as they are, while they are doing this life and death work, creating relationships that will hold a special meaning for the rest of their lives.  For someone who wants to understand camaraderie and the special humor that comes out of living in this alien environment, this film is a good way in.

Insight and the intimate look into the inner relationships of a family is something that everyone can relate to.  In “Brothers at War”, Isaac comes home from war and his daughter doesn’t recognize him.  That happens in real time.  This one guy told me, “You had three grown men crying back here.  We all have young kids.  I go away for a week and I miss my kids like you wouldn’t believe.  I never really understood what those guys do until I saw your brother come home to his daughter after seven months.  I finally got it.”

My agent at William Morris, Erik Seastrand, saw the film and asked me all these questions about my brothers and about my relationship with them.  I mean, he really grilled me.  Finally, I said, “Come on, Erik, you know what it’s like.  You’ve got brothers.” He said, “No.  I don’t.” The film was a way for him to better understand brotherhood. In the end, it’s a film about brotherhood set against the backdrop of the war in Iraq.

It’s also a film about an American family facing the crucible of war.  I think anyone who wants to know more about who is fighting the war, the impact that it has on their families… I think they’ll find “Brothers at War” very interesting.  

After screening the film at Notre Dame, (fellow ND alum) Brandon Tuley said to me, “I learned more in sixty minutes of watching your film than I did in four years of watching the news.” So, save yourself four years of watching the news and come watch “Brothers at War” (laughs).

JRH: That’s good.  We should close with that (laugh).

JR: Before we do, I want to tell you a little about some of the folks without whose help we would not be sitting here discussing Brothers at War.  First, my producing partner, Norman S. Powell, was really a mentor to me as a director and producer.  As a filmmaker, he really coached me, taught me to trust my instincts, challenged some of my choices, and put a lot of love and time into making “Brothers at War”.  His expertise and tutelage were a tremendous boon.

Many have commented on the excellence of “Brothers at War,” and a lot of credit needs to also to Bob DeMaio who did a great job editing the film.  He understood what I was trying to accomplish with the footage, and his sensitivity and taste allowed all the layers of emotion and meaning to exist, bubbling under the surface of the film.

We have received repeated compliments regarding the cinematic look of the film.  Sony featured “Brothers at War” at their kickoff event for NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) this year alongside Michael Mann’s upcoming “Public Enemies,” George Lucas and the Dallas Cowboys.  Conor Colwell who shot some of the startling, beautiful, and at times poetic images in the first third of the film deserves much credit for the unique look.  Marc Miller was instrumental in teaching and coaching us both in coverage and look.  His years of expertise were invaluable.

Finally, there would be no film, without the courage of a number of small business owners from my hometown of Decatur, IL.  After I had gone through my own finances, I had to raise a lot of money fairly quickly to fund the making of “Brothers at War”.  I went back to my hometown and approached small business owners, family and friends to see if they would invest in my idea.  These small business owners, family and friends voted with their pocketbooks to make “Brothers at War” a reality.

JRH: That’s outstanding.

JR: It’s true. The majority of the financing for “Brothers at War’ came from Heartland families. 

JRH: My hat’s off to them.  And to you, Jake.  Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.  You’ve got a great film.  Good luck with it.

JR: Thanks. It was my pleasure.

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I recently went to see “Brothers at War” again, while it was here in Los Angeles. The film has lost nothing in the months since I’d last seen it. If anything, it’s gotten better. Get out and see it. Asses in seats, people. That’s how we get more films like “Brothers at War.”

Semper fidelis,

J.R. Head

“Brothers at War” opens today in Peoria, IL, Shreveport, LA and Oakdale, MN.  It will be coming soon to Carlisle, PA.

Note: Part 1 of this 4 part interview can be found here and Part 2, here.

J.R. Head: Changing gears, (Executive Producer) Gary Sinise said of this film, “Brothers at War celebrates the courage and integrity of the American Soldier and the American military family.  It is also a film about a man’s love and respect for his two brothers and his dedication to telling their story.  A great film that I am proud to be a part of.”   That’s got to feel good, coming from someone of Gary’s caliber.

“Brothers at War” Director, Jake Rademacher:  Yeah, it was funny.  I was invited to screen “Brothers at War” in Iraq for General Petraeus’ public affairs folks and a number of our warriors stationed over there.  Upon viewing the film, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Loretta Vandenberg, extremely moved by “Brothers at War” said, “You need to get this to Gary Sinise.  He’s a big supporter of the troops, you need to get him to present this film.  Call him when you get back to Los Angeles.”  I was like, “okay… do you have his phone number?”

I mean, it’s not like Gary and I were having drinks at the same cantina.  I had always admired his acting, both on stage and on screen, but I didn’t really see any way to get in contact with him.  So, I just put that suggestion in the back of my head and came back to L.A.  While cutting the film… every time we’d make some changes my producing partner, Norman Powell, my editor, Bob DeMaio, and I’d bring in a couple friends, to get feedback on the cut.  An actor friend of mine, former Marine, Michael Broderick, had seen the film over the summer and when I came back to William Morris Agency, where we’re both rep’ed for voice-over, I saw him and he was excited to know how the screenings in Iraq went.

JRH:  Another Marine?  I like where this is going…

JR:  After telling him they went well, as an aside I off-handedly told him what LtCol Vandenberg had said about Gary Sinise.  Michael says, “I know Gary.” I said, “You know Gary?”  He says, “Yeah, yeah.  I’m having lunch with him later this week.”  I was like, “What?!” (laughs)  Cut to a week later, Michael tells me Gary wants to see “Brothers at War” and gives me the number to Eric, Gary’s assistant.  So, we went about finding a time in Gary’s schedule to see the film, and eventually set up a screening for the day before Thanksgiving.

JRH:  He obviously liked the film.  How did he become executive producer?

JR:  He laughed a lot in the beginning of the film, was moved during the middle, and I could see his excitement during the third act.  After the credits rolled, he just sat there for a couple of minutes, just taking it in.  Then we talked for about an hour, about the war, “Brothers at War,” his tours to visit the troops, it was the start of a deep friendship.  He put his shoulder behind helping us get distribution and raise awareness for the film.  He just started acting like an executive producer from that day on, so, eventually we made it official.

JRH:  I saw the film at the screening over at FOX studios–

JR: That was our first event. Jon Voight had seen “Brothers at War” the week before Gary and had fallen in love with it.  Gary Sinise, Jon Voight and Norman Powell and my production company, Metanoia Films, hosted a private screening on the Fox Lot to introduce “Brothers at War” to the entertainment community.  The film got a standing ovation by the 350 people there.  We had a great Q&A afterward.  They were pulling tables out of the reception room after and there was still a line of people that wanted to speak with me about the film.  It was a great event.  John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting went home that night, sat down at his piano and wrote a song.  He was inspired by the characters in the film, and then recorded his performance with the emotions stirred by the film still swirling inside him.  You can hear John’s voice as it was recorded that night during our end credits.

Gary Sinise, Jake Rademacher, Army Capt. Isaac Rademacher

JRH:  Wow.

JR:  He was really feeling it, Lee Holdridge composed the string section that supports John’s piano and vocals.  I think Brothers in Arms is a beautiful way to end the film.

JRH:  The FOX screening… Is that how you hooked up with Samuel Goldwyn?

JR:  No, but I got an excellent entertainment attorney through that process, Craig Emanuel, who is just a font of information, knowledge, and advice.  It became apparent to all of us: Craig, Norman, Gary, and Dave Scantling (who was starting to come into the picture at this point) that we had to prove that “Brothers at War” had an audience.  We had to take the film out into the country.  First “Brothers at War” world premiered at the G.I. Film Festival.  General Casey, the Chief of Staff of the Army and MNFI Commander of Iraq while we were shooting in Iraq, was there.  Robert Duvall was there, and Gary Sinise introduced the film.

“Brothers at War” received a standing ovation, and won “Best Feature Length Documentary.”  It received another standing ovation at West Point a week later.  Then Gary flew to Decatur, Illinois for a charity event, where we sold 700 tickets in six hours in order to raise $25,000 for veterans’ causes.  The next week at the Solstice Film Festival in Minnesota, we took “Best Documentary” and the Grand Jury Award.  The next week in Dallas we raised another $20,000 for veterans causes–

JRH:  Now, the G.I. Film Festival is obviously a “friendly audience” to a military film but the Solstice Film Festival isn’t a military film festival, is it?

JR:  No, it’s not.  I was really happy about the G.I. Film Festival because those are the guys, the warriors… I wanted to know what they thought about the film and was honored to have it received so well.  To me, that was the most important thing.  Solstice was really great because, as you note, it wasn’t a military festival.  It was in Minneapolis, which is very mixed, politically.  Very interesting screening, I’ll never forget it.  To win the “Grand Jury Prize” of the whole festival was really a great honor.  

It was interesting because there were only three veterans in the entire audience.  So, it was a great chance to see people who maybe don’t know a lot of people in the military, don’t have any military in their family, in their lives, but they just want to know more about what’s going on.  They’re curious about the whole thing.  We had a great Q&A afterwards.  One woman raised her hand and said (about the snipers) that it bothered her a little bit how they talked about death and doing what they had to do.  We had a fantastic conversation. 

I explained that I could’ve cut all that out, y’know, not have the truth in there, but that’s not what “Brothers at War” is about.  That’s how they deal with it and they’re doing a really tough job.  I told her that often a soldier’s opinion of Iraqis is tied directly to the soldier’s job.  I mean, if your job is to find the worst people doing the worst things and then take them out, you’re not going to have a very high opinion of them.  If, on the other hand, your job is to train and work with them every single day and mold them, like SSgt Allier, you generally have a much better opinion of them.  They’re your friends.  You see the good in them.  You see guys that are trying to rebuild their country, trying to grasp this opportunity that’s in front of them.  I think it’s inspiring to see someone taking steps toward that.  Allier says very clearly in the film that his opinion of the Iraqis started to change when he started to treat them like he would his Marines.  When they stepped up to go through the same dangers with him.

JRH:  So, the Solstice audience responded to the film as well as the festival judges?

JR:  Oh, yeah.  This guy came up to me afterwards and put his hand on my shoulder and said he’d been in the National Guard for sixteen years.  He worked as a prison guard in civilian life but he was also a Captain in the National Guard.  He’d done two tours in Iraq.  He said, “I just want to tell you what your film means to me…” and then he just looked down and he started to cry.  I’ll never forget it.  He said, “I’ve never cried in front of my kids.  I’ve never cried in front of my wife but you know what we go through.”  And he said, “I lost a lot of good buddies over there.” In Decatur, a gold star mom came up to me, told me she lost her son in Iraq and thanked me for making “Brothers at War.”

They are the ones that have driven this entire effort forward to try and make sure the American people get to see this film.  It’s one thing to get a million hits on the website or a standing ovation but when someone is moved by the film or a soldier comes up to me and says he can’t wait for his girlfriend or his dad to see it, that’s what’s important for me.  It keeps us all going.  So, we were able to generate some momentum by taking it out to these different events and the response was very positive.  My attorney talked to Endeavor and Graham Taylor, head of Endeavor Independent Film, responded to all that and said, “Listen, I’ll take you to a couple of distributors that I think would be right for this.” He called up Samuel Goldwyn.  Samuel Goldwyn Films saw the film and said they were very interested.  We sat down with them, and were really impressed. 

They’ve been around for a hundred years, and Peter Goldwyn grandson of Samuel was the one we met with.  He understood that I wanted to bring the film to the soldiers and their families first, for emotional reasons but also because there are 3 million people serving in the military right now between reserves and National Guard, and active duty.  There are 23 million veterans and they’ve been kind of overlooked as a group.  So, I thought I’d do a little something different… focus on them and bring the “Brothers at War”to them first, and Samuel Goldwyn Films was open to that.

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In the final part of my interview with Jake, we talk about brothers, family and why it’s important that Americans get out and see “Brothers at War.” Stay tuned.

Semper fidelis,

J.R. Head

“Brothers at War” is currently playing in Los Angeles at Santa Monica’s AMC Broadway 4.  It is also currently playing in Springfield, IL, White Plains, NY and Knoxville, TN. 

Note: Part 1 of this 4 part interview can be found here.

J.R. Head:  Tell me about the time frame of the film.  ”Brothers at War” was shot in 2005?

“Brothers at War” Director, Jake Rademacher:  Isaac departs in 2004, I join him in August 2005, and events in Iraq and on the Home front go through 2006.

JRH:  So, that’s pre-“Surge”.  But one of the things I noticed from the film was the advancement that the Iraqi Army was making.  I was encouraged by the individual efforts of people like [Marine] Staff Sergeant Allier and others to–

JR:  Correct. “Brothers at War” rolls back the clock to a time in the war when the future of Iraq wasn’t necessarily determined and, in fact, a number of people in America thought it was a lost cause.  In “Brothers at War” the audience gets a glimpse into where things were going, and insight into what led to the tremendous turnaround in Iraq.  They get to drop in with the Iraqi Army and see them in action.  The unit that I embedded with was the first Iraqi battalion to get it’s own “battle space” in all of Iraq.  They were actually in charge of that space, working with United States Marines who were military advisors.  The audience gets to walk alongside SSgt Allier as he mentors a company sometimes very humorously, sometimes in life threatening moments.  They were in charge of that space in Jazirah.  Jazirah is in the middle of the Sunni Triangle, just north of the Euphrates, between Ramadi and Fallujah.  The Iraqi battalion’s mission was to take this safe haven away from the insurgents, many of whom were coming in from other countries and using this area as a staging ground for operations in Ramadi, and Fallujah.  Almost all the insurgents that we ran into had Syrian passports.  Many used tactics that gave evidence of serious military training. 

JRH:  So, the mentorship that the Marines–

JR:  The mentorship, the standing up of the Iraqi army was a key component to winning the war.  What the Surge did was… General Petraeus multiplied that strategy.  What’s exciting about what he did was Petraeus had the audacity to ask for 20,000 more soldiers at, politically speaking, the worst time he could have done it.  He had the perseverance and the strength of character to take the slings and arrows that came with asking for them.  What he did with them was also just mind-boggling at the time.  He took what we see working in the film and he multiplied it across Iraq!  He said, “That’s working, so let’s do that all over the place.  Let’s take our platoons and Iraqi platoons and put them together and give them this battle space.  And we’ll put these other guys together and give them this space over here.  We’ll make them live together, work together and patrol together.”  And that’s really what the Surge was.  It wasn’t just 20,000 guys getting thrown into the mix.  He multiplied their impact by pairing them up with Iraqi soldiers.  Look at SSgt Allier teaching the Shia soldiers to interact with the Sunni citizens.  They’re afraid to do it, at first, but then they do it–they get to know them.  The Sunnis start to realize the Shia aren’t there to kill them and vice versa and they start to develop a relationship.  And that relationship, on a much larger scale, is what led to the Surge working.  These elements working together.  The other thing you see, early in the film, that was pre-Surge and very effective was the recon that my brother’s guys were doing.  What they were trying to do was shut down the inflow of–

JRH:  –Foreign fighters–

JR:  And foreign ammunition!  Explosives and detonating devices.  They were helping to shut down the flow of that into the country.  All along the Syrian border, like in Haditha… Haditha was the worst smuggling area in the country.  So, stuff would come in through Haditha and then go along what is called a “rat line” to Ramadi, then to Fallujah and to Baghdad.  Or to Ramadi and then up to Mosul.  You get to see what was effective in limiting the flow of foreign fighters, basically attacking them as they came in and eliminating that pipeline.  You get to see the Iraqis getting on their feet for the first time.  Sometimes stumbling, other times doing well and you see the Marines giving them encouragement and helping them through very real obstacles.  Literally, guys getting their leg torn up or their face messed up and going back out on patrol the next day.  They’re pointing out, you know, “Here’s what you did.  This was good but here’s what you can do better.”  I mean, war is not just like a light switch to be flipped on and off.   It’s a very long process.  Learning to do anything well takes a long time.  It takes even longer to get 130 guys to act together as a unit in combat.  Basically, I think there was a lot of success under General Casey’s command that went unreported and it was these successes that allowed General Patraeus to come in and generate the amazing successes that he did.

JRH:  Some called it the “beat cop” strategy–

JR:  The “beat cop” strategy!  In a warzone!  Which, if you step back and think about it, is scary as hell.  There was resistance from all sides.  People said it was crazy to drop our guys into the most dangerous neighborhoods and have them live there.  “We’re not gonna give ‘em a base.  They’re gonna make their own base with an Iraqi Army platoon.” (snorts) These guys are wondering, “Are they infiltrated with terrorists?  Can we trust them?”  Crazy.  Bold and crazy.  But it was exactly the right move.

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In Part 3 of this 4 part interview, Jake Rademacher talks about some of the recognizable names that rallied behind “Brothers at War,” the festival circuit and more.  Stay tuned.

Semper fidelis,

J.R. Head

“Brothers at War” is currently playing in Los Angeles at Santa Monica’s AMC Broadway 4.  It is also currently playing in Springfield, IL, White Plains, NY and Knoxville, TN.

Cpt. Isaac Rademacher — Jake Rademacher

After some initial pleasantries (actor talk, a little sports, our mutual respect for Gary Sinise, etc.), we got down to it.

By the way, if you want to get a true feeling of how the interview was for me, try to read it very quickly.

–

J.R. Head:  First, let me say “Brothers at War” looks fantastic.  You’re an actor.  What was it like to make the transition to first-time director?

Jake Rademacher: I always had a fascination with story and who people are since I was a young boy.  I did a lot of reading growing up, watched a lot of movies, and eventually won the English award in High School.  I then went on to Notre Dame after poor eyesight kept me out of West Point and studied English.  I was actually overseas studying at Trinity College Dublin during my junior year when I discovered acting.  What I learned as an actor greatly informed not only my directing, but what I decided to focus on in “Brothers at War.” Traveling around the country as a stage actor gave me an understanding of story and audience from the boards, being up there in front of them.  In preparing for those roles, I spent a long time studying behavior, I wanted to give the audience something real.  In order to do that I would research extensively.  I think that element; spending all that time and all that focus and all that energy trying to understand people, trying to learn about them, trying to figure out how they work, understanding who we are and why we are and what we do, I think, had a lot to do with my ability to have “Brothers at War” cut to the bone of who my brothers, my family, and the warriors on the edge of the battlefield are.

JRH:  What about the look of the film?  You shot some of it, yes?  Who taught you to shoot?

JR:  A friend of mine, Ben Byer, got diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and he asked me to go out to the east coast with him and shoot some interviews and B-roll for him.  I said, “I don’t know.  I’ll do whatever I can to help you out but I’ve never shot anything before.”  He said, “Don’t worry about it.  I went to Paris Film School. I’ll teach you.”  I said, “Ohhhh-kay”.  I went over to his home in Chicago, and he gave me a crash course in shooting.  Over the course of a few hours he taught me about focus, aperture… the way he taught me shot composition was he took a book of these amazing stills, a lot of black and whites, and he just showed me how to construct a shot.  The meaning behind a shot.  Framing.  After catching the acting bug in Ireland, I toured Europe during the summer and would spend hours entranced by Monets, Renoirs, Van Goghs …across Italy and France.  Later, every year a major exhibit would be featured at the Chicago Museum of Art, and I would spend hours just looking at paintings.  Absorbed, fascinated, taking it all in.  I think all those paintings, telling a story or conveying an emotion in one frame, in a picture, left a deep impression.

JRH:  So, an appreciation for painting–

JR:  –for painting, for a beautiful still.  That was the start, but I learned a lot about shooting on the fly from my two DPs (directors of photography), Marc Miller and Conor Colwell.  Conor was at LMU film school and I could just tell from his reel that he had the eye. He really knew how to tell a story in a shot.  Marc has over 25 years of experience.  Conor is kind of young and hip.  So, it was a good mix.  I learned from both.  Stan Eng also accompanied Conor and I on the first trip and shot some good stuff as well.

JRH:  So, they were able to kind of mentor you a bit and–

JR:  Their tutelage came in handy especially during the second trip.  Marc has a wife and kids, so I had an issue with putting him in the most dangerous spots.  I’m single, you know.  No wife.  No kids.  So, I climbed the walls with the snipers, was in the lead Iraqi unit as it pushed out the gate.  Norman S. Powell, my producing partner looked at the footage and said I really grew as a photographer over the course of the embeds.  

JRH:  What did you most want to take home with you?  Was there a point where you said, “This is the shot I came here for?”

JR:  I thought the people were the most interesting thing to see in Iraq.  I wasn’t interested in getting them to say something that I had written, to fill in some kind of outline.  I was on a mission of discovery.  I hadn’t written my script ahead of time.  So, I was really interested in finding out who the guys were, why they did what they did and what they had to say about it.

–

JRH:  That gets into another question I have for you.  As we see in the trailer, you say you wanted to know why your brothers do what they do.  Couldn’t you have just asked them?  What compelled you to go and see things with your own eyes?

JR:  That’s an interesting question because the thing is you can’t ask them.  I mean, you can ask them–The problem is that they try to tell us but give up because it’s too hard to explain.  The chasm is too great.  These guys study combat, not communication.  I found it very difficult to explain to people what it was like and I communicate for a living, so I can only imagine what it’s like to be a soldier and try to communicate it to a civilian.  So, the only way for me to understand, to cross that chasm, was to go, see it and experience it for myself.  There were a couple of things that were important to me.  I didn’t want to make a film with people talking about what they did twenty years ago, when it was distant.  If I’m going to make a documentary, I want to interview them on the job, while they’re doing it and ask them how they feel about it.  How did it feel to be in Iraq, while you’re sitting on the Syrian border, eight hours away from your buddies, in 120 degree heat… How are you feeling about it?  You enjoying yourself?  I figured they might give me a more emotionally in-tune answer there.  Also, this dovetails with the look of the film.  A lot of the interviews are in close-up because I wanted to pick up what’s happening beyond what they’re saying.  I wanted to pick up how they’re feeling, where they are and let all these things inform “Brothers at War”.

JRH:  Did it take a long time for the guys to get used to having a camera in their face?

JR:  Yeah.  Hell, it took me a while to get used to the camera being in my face.  I didn’t want to perform for the film.  I didn’t even know if I was going to be in the film.  I just let myself be filmed because we thought that may be the story.  With them, I think it was a little awkward, at first, so I tended to shoot a lot.  I just kept rolling.  Part of the reason was so that they would forget about the camera.  Further, for the most part, we were “outside the wire” on a mission, it’s dangerous, they’ve got a job to do.  It also got to the point where I’m out there with you–You’re carrying a rifle, I’m carrying a camera.  You’re doing your thing, I’m doing mine.  Under stressful situations, I find you get to know people in a more intimate way.  More so than, say, standing at a bus stop or working with them at a restaurant.  Y’know, nobody is going to lose their life if someone forgets to clear table twelve. 

So, out on a mission, you get closer with people, you get to know a little bit more.  It makes you more in-tune with them.  You spend a lot of time with these guys, so they really get to know who you are.  Bottom line is that we all kind of forgot about the camera because there were more important things going on and I think there was a bit of trust.  I wasn’t like a news crew out for one day on a mission, trying to get the answers I wanted to plug into my story.  I was there as someone in for the long haul.  I was there for three months and went on 30 missions, asked a lot of questions, interviewed a lot of war fighters and had a real interest in what they were doing and why they were doing it.  I think a lot of those guys want to talk about what they’re doing, they just don’t want to have there story suffer the telephone game as it goes from the News Bureau desk to an editor back in the states who does the final edit even though the closest he’s ever been to the Sandbox is when he picks his kids up from kindergarten.  

That was one of the most exciting things for me, to just be there to the point where I just kind of disappear.  When I was with the snipers and we caught that M&M moment, I just faded into the bricks.  I think that was the second hour of footage on them.  I shot a whole other hour of footage before that moment happened.  And by the time they get into the banter: the girlfriend and all that, they’re just doing their thing.  They’re trying to pass the time and they’re not worried about the guy sitting against the wall (me) doing his thing.  They don’t even know if I’m rolling or not at that point.

JRH:  The M&M bit is in the trailer, which looks great, by the way.  It shows a pretty broad range.  It’s not just some dour, heavy-handed thing.  There’s an element of humor as well as more serious tones.  What can the audience expect from “Brothers at War”?

JR:  Well, the trailer is very evocative but, at two and a half minutes, it’s really just a teaser.  The trailer gives you a sense of the danger, of the humor, a sense of the discovery and certainly a glimpse of how we penetrate into the family dynamic.  You’ll get a chance to see these guys reflected through the viewpoints of their wives, their daughters, their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters.  So, when you start to see somebody through how other people look at them, I think you start to paint a more complete portrait of who these guys are.  An additional element of “Brothers at War” is the opportunity to spend time with and meet a wonderful cross section of the people we have serving us overseas. These unique individuals create a vivid and dynamic portrait of our American Warrior on the edge of the battlefield. 

You get a taste of that in the trailer, you get a moment, a flash of some of the guys you meet along the way.  Each of these guys comes out of the texture of the scene and really takes the spotlight, and you get to know who they really are… who these guys are that stepped up to be Marines and Rangers and Recon Paratroopers and snipers.  Guys working with the Iraqi Army, Iraqis who stepped forward to be a translator in the most dangerous combat units.  You also get a sense of Iraq, the landscape.  You get a chance to go up to Kurdistan, into the Sunni Triangle, out to the Syrian border.  So, you get perspective on Iraq by going on the journey across the country in this story.  

Finally, you get a chance to see how this war is actually being fought.  You get a chance to sit in on an intel brief and be out at a reconnaissance site at night as the action is happening.  Then during the day, when nothing is happening.  You’re with the soldiers baking in the sun and waiting for the next moment of action the next night.  You get to go out with the National Guard snipers and see how they’re trying to ferret out the bad guys.  Trying to catch them in the act of placing I.E.D.s or walking out of mosques with automatic weapons.  You get a chance to see the Iraqi Army and make your own evaluation about why it takes more than ten minutes to set up the Iraqi Army.

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In part two, Jake Rademacher talks about “pre-Surge” Iraq, my beloved Marine Corps and more. Stay tuned.

Semper fi,

J.R. Head

“Brothers at War” is currently playing in Los Angeles at Santa Monica’s AMC Broadway 4.  It is also currently playing in Springfield, IL, White Plains, NY and Knoxville, TN.